In 1970, 300 people gathered in the basement of the US Grant Hotel for the first San Diego Comic-Con. More than 40 years later, the convention -- now called Comic-Con International -- draws more than 100,000 people to the San Diego Convention Center, overflowing into surrounding parks and hotels.

In the intervening decades, the superheroes, fantasy and science fiction stories celebrated at the convention have gone from the margins of pop culture to dominating it. Last year's $1.5 billion-grossing movie, "The Avengers," stars a group of Marvel Comics superheroes many in the audience likely couldn't have named before 2008's "Iron Man" movie hit theaters. On the smaller screen, AMC's "The Walking Dead," which was watched in numbers comparable to "American Idol" when 12.4 million people tuned in for its third season finale, started off in 2003 as a black and white comic book from indie publisher Image Comics.

In other words, what was once geek has turned chic.

"Back when I was reading comics, I would look at places like Japan with incredible envy: People could read comics and no one would look down their noses at them," said Joe Quesada, Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment. "A generation of readers grew up reading comics, then became established writers, directors and artists in other industries. The coolest people on Earth are saying 'this is cool stuff; you should check it out, too."

"I can give you endless stories of people who are fans of zombie culture, whether it's a managing partner at a law firm or a young 15-year-old girl," said Liam Brenner, whose company, Ruckus Runs, operates the Walking Dead Escape running event down the street from the convention center in Petco Park. "I'm shocked at how broad zombie culture really is."

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And it's not just zombies.

"There are people who get geeky about movies or sports," said David Glanzer, director of Comic-Con International. "Comic-Con has things that anybody can geek out about."

Geek culture can be traced back as far as 1977, according to Jonah Weiland, owner and publisher of ComicBookResources.com, an online comics news site.

"It has its beginnings in the release of 'Star Wars.' If you're going to go back in history, that's when this began," Weiland said.

A year later, Superman flew onto movie screens.

"That's when geek culture started to get noticed by the mainstream, and that only started to grow when the Tim Burton 'Batman' came out in 1989," he added.

But it took the Internet and a British boy wizard for geek culture to really explode, according to Melissa D. Aaron, a professor of English and Foreign Languages at Cal Poly Pomona.

"Harry Potter exploded more or less at the same time as the Internet did, so people could start to meet each other," Aaron said. "I have some friends who met online at a Harry Potter site, met up offline and now are married."

Aaron teaches a class on Harry Potter each fall at Cal Poly Pomona, which is always full, she said.
"My students are literally at the age where they grew up with Harry. They were 11 when Harry was 11," Aaron said. "One of the sayings in my class is 'let your nerd flag fly,' because many of them are also nerdy about 'Hunger Games' or 'Lord of the Rings.'"

The mass popularity of such films has helped take away the negative sting from being called nerdy or a geek.

"It's becoming so normalized. Liking Buffy (the Vampire Slayer) doesn't make you a geek, because everyone likes Buffy," Aaron said. "Harry Potter really made being a geek cool, or OK or not even visible in some ways."

SAN DIEGO, CA - JULY 15: General Atmosphere during Comic-Con International 2012 at San Diego Convention Center on July 15, 2012 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) (Frazer Harrison)

Hollywood has taken note, both mining geek culture for blockbuster hits and marketing directly to the fans. Movie studios have a major presence on the convention floor and panels to show off new movie or television trailers can reach thousands of fans who line up for hours to get a first look.

"It might have to do with the current economics of making movies, where everyone's really scared to have a big budget movie flop," said Susana Polo, managing editor of TheMarySue.com, a website described as "a guide to girl geek culture." "(Comic-Con International) is much more about movies now than it is comics."

Complaints that the convention has drifted away from its roots as a comic-centered celebrationare as old as the convention itself, Glanzer said.

Among the guests of honor at the 1974 San Diego Comic-Con were film director Frank Capra and "Peanuts" creator Charles M. Schulz, which shows "the Comic-Con founders were ahead of their time" in recognizing that fandom crosses format and genre boundaries, Glanzer said.

But in the United States, comics haven't quite reached the popular acceptance that its characters and stories achieve when film or television bring them to life.

"It's strange. Hollywood has managed to mainstream these comic book characters but comics are still suffering under this 1960s idea that they're still for kids or immature men," Polo said. "And you look at countries like France or Japan and comics are just another way to consume stories."

Still, it's just a matter of time, according to many in fandom.

"The world has finally caught up to what the geeks and nerds knew 20 years ago," Weiland said. "Comics are awesome."

Correction: Professor Melissa D. Aaron's name was spelled incorrectly in a previous version of this story. We regret the error.

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